Friday, March 16, 2018

Andrew Gelman — Gaydar and the fallacy of objective measurement

Stripping a phemenon of its social context, normalizing a base rate to 50%, and seeking an on-off decision: all of these can give the feel of scientific objectivity—but the very steps taken to ensure objectivity can remove social context and relevance.
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
Gaydar and the fallacy of objective measurement
Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University

2 comments:

Ryan Harris said...

Good analogue to Economic measurements. Inflation and unemployment leap to the fore.

Tom Hickey said...

Conventional economics in a nutshell.